Capitol rioters called Pelosi’s office looking for stuff they left behind on Jan. 6.

When Capitol Hill staffers ended up fast paced striving to clean up on Jan. 7, 2021, people today in Dwelling Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s business abruptly begun answering an strange set of phone phone calls.* Some who had taken aspect in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot began calling Pelosi’s office to obtain out where by they could get well any merchandise they experienced still left behind.

Persons who experienced stormed the Capitol known as “asking whether there was a shed and found simply because they forgot their cell phone there, or they remaining their purse or what have you,” Rep. Jamie Raskin informed Insider. The staffers passed on the calls to legislation enforcement. “The officers quickly got on the cellphone and said, yeah, just give us your identify, your deal with, your Social, you know, and we’ll tie up all those free ends,” the Democratic lawmaker from Maryland explained.

Raskin, who is on the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot, mentioned the episode illustrates how so a lot of of the persons who stormed the Capitol definitely felt they had carried out very little incorrect. “What’s so fascinating to me about that there actually were being people today who felt as if they experienced been summoned to Washington by the president,” Raskin claimed. The cellphone phone calls wanting for lost merchandise illustrate a single of the most important problems the committee investigating the riot is dealing with. “When they ended up told that they were trespassing and invading the Capitol, they explained the president invited them to be there,” he stated. “They did not have any variety of delicate comprehending of the separation of powers. They just considered that the number a single human being in the US government experienced invited them to be there, and as a result they had a appropriate.”

That mindset that so lots of rioters experienced “underscores the central part that Donald Trump” performed on what occurred that working day. But it also complicates issues for the committee due to the fact “it does generate a trouble for assigning guilt at unique levels of carry out.”